HomeMy WebLinkAbout04-01-26 Public Comment - H. Happel - Fwd_ Thoughts on Citizen Advisory BoardsFrom:Henry Happel
To:Bozeman Goverment Study Commission
Subject:[EXTERNAL]Fwd: Thoughts on Citizen Advisory Boards
Date:Wednesday, April 1, 2026 10:28:26 AM
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Begin forwarded message:
From: Henry Happel <henryhhappel@gmail.com>
Subject: Thoughts on Citizen Advisory Boards
Date: March 16, 2026 at 4:24:06 PM MDTTo: Joey Morrison <jmorrison@bozeman.net>, Douglas Fischer
<dfischer@bozeman.net>, Emma Bode <ebode@bozeman.net>,
asweeney@bozeman.net, Jennifer Madgic <jmadgic@BOZEMAN.NET>
Cc: Chuck Winn <CWinn@BOZEMAN.NET>, Erin George<egeorge@bozeman.net>, Greg Sullivan <gsullivan@bozeman.net>
Dear Commissioners:
I am writing to offer my views on Bozeman citizen advisory boards. These
views are mostly informed by my almost decade of service on the
Community Development Board.
The comments that follow should be taken in the context of my overall
belief that the City is well managed, and that the Commissioners and
employees of the City perform their roles in what they believe to be thebest interests of the City.
Authority of Advisory Boards: First, on a matter expressly before the
Bozeman City Study Commission, I do not think that citizen advisoryboards should be empowered to make any final decisions on behalf of the
City. This authority should rest solely with the Commissioners who are
elected directly by the citizens. Giving advisory boards decision-making
powers could politicize appointments to the boards, provide unwarrantedpolitical cover to Commissioners, and empower unelected citizens to
derail City projects that would have met with City Commission approval. I
have already communicated these views to the Study Commission.
Purpose of Citizen Advisory Boards: It is important to remember that all
advisory boards exist to provide advice to the City Commission. As a
result, there is, or at least ought to be, some tension between the advisory
boards and City staff. This is a feature, not a bug. In some circumstances,City staff would prefer not to have citizens looking over their shoulders and
offering independent advice on matters where staff considers itself the
experts. The contrary argument, and the one that prevails in having citizen
advisory boards at all, is that these boards offer an additional and
hopefully informed point of view on various issues of the day and that
these points of view are of use to the Commission.
City Ordinance 5323: In 2021, the Commission, I think at the behest ofthen City Manager Jeff Mihelich, passed Ordinance 5323 which imposes a
number of restraints on citizen advisory boards. While many of the
provisions in Ordinance 5323 are fine, some are not. Overall, the
Ordinance weakens the effectiveness of the advisory boards, suggeststhat Boards should just stay out of the way of City staff, and reflects an
unwarranted level of paranoia about board members.
Here are the most egregious of these provisions in the order in which theyappear in the Ordinance:
Subsection 2.3: “The Board should communicate with the Commission
only through approved minutes, work plans, progress reports, or formalrecommendations or resolutions voted on by the board.”
Because the Community Development Board does not generally create
any meaningful work plans or progress reports, this provision severelylimits its ability to effectively communicate its work to the City Commission.
Imagine if State Government said to the City that it might only
communicate its views on policy matters via City Commission approved
minutes or formal recommendations voted on by the Commission. I thinkthe City would consider that a strong indication that the State didn’t really
care what the City had to say.
The Community Development Board, and other Boards as well, should bepermitted to provide written and oral summaries of its proceedings to the
City Commission so long as these have received the approval of the
Board. Artificial intelligence can substantially assist in preparing drafts of
these summaries. (See for example The Bozeman Brief podcast seriesdeveloped by Mark Egge.) Board members and City Commissioners
should be allowed to converse on issues addressed by the Board.
Subsection 2.5: “Board Chairs should direct policy related questions toboth the Commission Liaison and Staff Liaison.”
This provision is ambiguous. Does it refer to policy related questions
raised during board meetings, to policy related questions raisedelsewhere, or to both? The purpose of all the advisory boards is to
address policy related questions and provide advice on these as they see
fit to the Commission. This Subsection should either be deleted or limited
to questions of procedure raised outside of board meetings. The
Ordinance needs to acknowledge that Board Chairs are the ones
empowered to run all Board meetings under Roberts Rules of Order.
Subsection 2.6: “Board Members shall adhere to the “One Body, One
Voice” principle in communications to the City Commission on matters
under the Board’s purview, or may become under the purview of the
Board.”
I think what this Subsection is trying to say, in part, is that after a Board
has come to a decision on some matter, no member of the Board may
thereafter express any opinion other than in support of the Board decision
either orally or in writing to the Commission or any Commissioners. Onthis interpretation, the Subsection raises some issues:
1. In would appear that the purpose of this Subsection is toprevent dissenting Board members from arguing their casebefore the Commission. In my view the Commission couldbenefit from hearing dissenting views from board members,certainly if in the form of written public comment. 2. Does this provision violate the free speech rights of advisoryboard members? I think so. No other Bozeman residents areprohibited from commenting to the Commission on a matteraddressed by a citizen advisory board.3. Would the City be comfortable in highlighting to individualscontemplating service on an advisory board how their views areconstrained by this Subsection of the Ordinance?
Even more onerously, this Subsection would appear to be saying that that
no Board member may express any opinion to the Commission on any
matter that might come before its Board in the future. In other words, if you
are interested enough and know enough to serve on a citizen advisory
board, you are not to ever provide comments to the Commission on any
matter that might in the future be taken up for consideration by your board.
This places an unreasonable burden on every board member to guess
what might come before its board in the future. It is a serious disincentive
for citizens to serve on an advisory board, an unwarranted restraint on the
flow of information to City Commissioners, and a pretty clear violation of
the First Amendment rights of advisory board members. This Subsection
should be deleted.
Subsection 3.3.c: “Board Members should be mindful of arguing or
debating the merits of staff’s professional judgment; rather, should Board
Members disagree with staff’s professional judgment, they should directsuch disagreement to the Staff Liaison; in the event that the Staff Liaison
is subject to the disagreement, Board Members should direct their
concerns to the City Manager.”
By definition, if the advisory boards are to have any effect at all on City
policies, they must from time to time, and to one degree or another,
question and oppose policies proposed by City staff. This provision is thus
at odds with the fundamental purposes of the Boards and should be
deleted.
Subsection 3.3.g: “A Board Member must not attempt to pressure or
influence discussions, recommendations, workloads, schedules, or
department priorities absent approval of the City Manager and only then
upon an action of the majority of the City Commission.”
A more accurate way to say this would be that no individual BoardMember should ever attempt to influence in any way what any City
department does. As chairman of the Community Development Board I
violated this prohibition in meetings with heads of the Community
Development Department by suggesting that Board Minutes could relyheavily on the videos of the meetings, by arguing that Board agendas
should be made available in the middle of the week prior to meetings, by
offering my opinion (solicited by the Department) on candidates to provide
consulting services to the City, and by occasionally suggesting revisions toBoard agendas. All of this seemed unobjectionable. I’m fairly certain City
employees do not need the protection, if any, offered by this Subsection.
They can always just say no. This Subsection too, should be deleted.
Subsection 3.3.h.iii: “Board members may direct questions regarding the
factual basis for an item or a question soliciting staff expertise to the City
employee presenting the item; questions other than those directly related
to the factual basis of an agenda item should be directed to the StaffLiaison who may request assistance of other city employees in answering
the question.”
This Subsection attempts to limit the freedom of Board members to askpertinent policy questions of City employees and as such undermines the
fundamental goal of all the boards to provide policy advice to the City
Commission. It has no place in these rules and should be deleted.
Subsection 3.3.i.ii: “…Board Member attendance at public meetings called
by Staff or City Manager should not occur unless requested by the City
Manager.”
Having restricted Board members speech rights in Subsection 2.3, this
proviso seeks to limit, in a way not applicable to any other Bozeman
residents, the right of Board members to attend public meetings. This
Subsection should be an embarrassment to the City inasmuch as it ratherclearly violates the freedom of assembly rights guaranteed by the First
Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Would the City be comfortable in
highlighting to individuals contemplating service on an advisory board how
their Constitutional rights are constrained by the mere fact of serving on
an advisory board? My personal view is that this would dampen the
enthusiasm of more than a few candidates.
Fortunately, perhaps, my experience on the Community Development
Board suggests that of the above highlighted Ordinance provisions, only
the first was carefully followed. The rest were at least to some extent
ignored by the Commission and Staff liaisons, by City staff generally, by
board members, and by me. Unfortunately, there are other provisions in
the Ordinance that I’ve not highlighted that also privilege City staff over
board members and/or exhibit some level of paranoia about the good will
of board members.
Reading the above provisions made my think that Mr. Mihelich perhaps
had unfortunate encounters with some unruly Colorado advisory board
members in a former job. Instead of attempting to itemize and prohibit
bad behavior (which is mission impossible anyway since there areinnumerable ways the unruly can be disruptive or rude), the potential
problem of a poorly behaving citizen advisory board member should be
dealt with by a simple ordinance provision explicitly stating that the City
Commission may remove any board member from office at any time forany reason, or for no reason at all.
Other Procedural Impediments: There are other ways in which City staff
can shape the advice coming from citizen advisory boards. One is to seekanswers to easier questions and ignore the harder ones. For example, the
Community Development board historically has been required by State
law to pass on changes in zoning. In theory there are two questions
involved: 1. Is the proposed zoning change legal? 2. Is the proposedzoning change the best policy outcome for the City as a whole? An
affirmative answer to the first question is a necessary but not sufficient
answer to the second. The materials provided by City staff to the Board
addressed the first issue at length and the second issue typically not at all.However, it is just such policy issues that advisory boards should be
debating. (I need to add that in connection with the consideration last year
of the new Unified Development Code, probably the most important
undertaking by the Board in the last five years, City staff did an admirablejob providing information to and engaging meaningfully with the Board on
policy issues.)
A second way in which City government sometimes reduces theeffectiveness of any opinions coming out of the Community Development
board is to only present it with decisions when any opinion contrary to City
government’s proposal is too late. This often results from inadvertence. As
far as I can tell, City staff goes a good job of soliciting advice from the CityCommission on major policy matters early and often, but this at times has
been less so with the Community Development Board. (Here again,
however, in connection with the consideration of the Unified Development
Code, it would be quite unfair to characterize the City’s engagement of theCommunity Development Board as being untimely.)
Conclusion: In my optimistic view, citizen advisory boards will be most
effective when three criteria are met:
1. Boards are populated with engaged, knowledgeable, and
pragmatic citizens offering differing points of view. To achieve thiswill probably require that the City Commission actively solicits at
least some citizens with these attributes to sit on some boards.
2. City staff and Board members deal with one another always on aprofessional basis. Each side recognizes and respects the
obligations and the time and other constraints of the other. City staffunderstands that the boards exist in part to question both existing
policies and policies under development by the City. Politely askinghard questions and expecting answers is not interpreted as
anything other than board members performing their properfunction. Board members recognize the work pressures of City staff
and the additional work and after-hours obligations advisory boardsimpose on staff.
3. Boards have substantial freedom to communicate their views to the
City Commission in a variety of public ways. Board members areallowed like any other citizens to lobby the City Commission in
writing on any matters so long as they make it clear that they arespeaking only for themselves.
Best,
Hap Happel